Fictional stories are great at teaching for many reasons. People love storytelling but don’t always need the stories to be based on reality, fiction is a great escape and can also carry a message sometimes even more powerful than nonfiction stories. Many fictional stories are allegories with hidden meaning that isn’t apparent on the surface but through symbolism are able to convey a moral or political message.
A fictional story that’s had an influence on my life growing up was a TV and movie series called the X-files. Through the twisted tales of this franchise, I learned to appreciate oddities. One of the recurring morals of the story in the X-Files is that there are things in this world which aren’t always easy or even possible to explain with science as we know it. The character I empathize with is the Cigarette Smoking Man. To me, he was neither hero nor villain, but more of a necessity for challenging the characters.. It’s an endlessly fascinating series which I hope they continue to expand. I remember playing the old PC game from ’98, an update would be interesting.